By The Landlord

Prince played ping-pong. Kate Bush stops listening to music and watches comedy. Sometimes we all just have to take a breather. It's been a bit of week, after all. Even more political lunatics are trying to take over. Everything has gone awry. It is time to take stock, and regroup. And so this week, the Song Bar is going to be your oasis of calm, your escape from craziness. So let's pour the tea, put our feet up, curl up with a book, watch telly, take a siesta, climb into a hammock. Or you might do something alternative. Laughter yoga, anyone? Turkish bath? Thai boxing class? Plate smashing? Gigantic chess? Game of Twister? Quality time with the cat? Or just stay in and get things done?

Relaxation means many things to many people and all types are popping into the bar this week to tell us how they do it. “Art raises its head where creeds relax,” says Friedrich Nietzsche. “Caffeine and stunts relax me,” says Nicholas Cage, with that manic look. OK Nick, here’s your espresso – now go and do some tumbles in our beer garden. Queen Latifah tells us she has a drum kit in her dressing room. “I play drums to relax and have some fun.” And here’s Noel Gallagher: “I have three kids and a cat and a busy, noisy house. I get more time to relax when I'm working.” And so off he goes to knock together some chord sequences.

And now perhaps the coolest dude of all, Usain Bolt, strides into the bar. That guy really knows how to relax: “I learned over the years that if you start thinking about the race, it stresses you out a little bit. I just try to think about video games, what I’m gonna do after the race, what I’m gonna do to just chill.” Usain certainly does that better than anybody, before and during the race - because if sprinters tense up they slow down. Before the race? I remember him smiling and chatting up a girl holding one of the kit boxes just a minute before the 2012 Olympic 100m final in London. And after? As I recall, he managed to relax considerably with the Swedish women’s beach ball team after the other gold medals.

Usain Bolt ... relaxed? Just a bit ...

As well as exercise, calm or vigorous, upright or indeed horizontal, relaxing is also a state of mind that can help unlock creativity or revelation. That very different kind of athlete, of the mental kind, William S Burroughs, tells us that: “Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” Some people might interpret that as drugs, others in the form of prayer. But others just have to keep busy. The travel writer Paul Theroux says: “I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something.”

Tea and biscuits, anyone? Your song suggestions might serve this up

And then of course there's listening to, or making music. So your song suggestions this week can mention any form of leisure or other activity that talks about unwinding, or in turn, cries out for some form of relief. Some songs are also about wanting to relax, but not being able to. And the very process of songwriting, in expressing the previously inexpressible, is also a way to find calm.

So while this week’s topic is about relaxation, the music market and the internet is awash with “relaxation” and “chillout” songs. That might include whale song, meditation, or the sound of the sea. Now, if there's one thing in my book that is not relaxing, it's listening to the genre of "relaxing music". Surely 35 million plays can't be wrong can they if they click on stuff such as this. Well, no, if you consider that 35 million Scathophagidae aren’t wrong to land on shite.

But let us be calm, calm, calm… So also, if this week’s guru considers it suitable, then perhaps as well as suggesting songs about relaxation and leisure, you might fancy naming songs that also in turn help you relax. So here’s one of mine. Whatever is going on, Lambchop’s songs, even though the subject matter are often tinged with melancholy, always seem to have the required effect of the feeling of having enough time to inhabit the music with full attention. Somehow they have time, they unfurl like a leaf. After all, that is the secret of relaxation. To be fully immersed, to live in the present, and not be distracted or interrupted by the many things modern life does to us. To take just the right amount of time over things. Aah...

So then, who is this week’s referee of relaxation and conciliator of calm? I am delighted to welcome back another previous reader from the Guardian column who has now chosen to come to the new bar – EspressoBongo. Please suggest your songs below until Monday evening UK time for cups of joy served in playlists next Wednesday. Let tranquility reign and creativity thrive.

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Fancy a turn behind the pumps at The Song Bar? Care to choose a playlist from songs nominated and write something about it? Then feel free to contact The Song Bar here, or try the usual email address.

Jon Spencer’s explosive solo to Marianne Faithfull’s gentle honesty, Bill Ryder-Jones love songs to music by the film director David Lynch, this week’s album roundup embraces a wealth of experimentation and styles

Word of the week: It's the infinitesimally small subatomic particle which forms matter, a type of curdled cheese from soured milk, is used in computer language and in sci-fi fiction names, but where in lyrics?

Word of the week: With an appropriately flamboyant sound and rhythm it’s a word best known for the title of Freddie Mercury’s epic Bohemian Queen song, and several major classical works, but where is it used in song lyrics?

Word of the week: It’s an adjective with a beautiful sound. It means the characteristics of our ape cousins, but of course sharing almost all the same DNA, it also means us. But where is simian in lyrics?

Word of the Week: It sizzles off the tongue, it’s the name of a great inventor, and after him, a unit of magnetic flux density, and it’s also a car, and in slang recreational drug, but where does it appear in song lyrics?

Word of the Week: It’s a word with a beautiful sound formed from the Latin word, umbra, for shade, is not merely an expanding accessory to shelter from the rain, also a general term of protection or a thing made of many parts

Word of the Week: It’s a famous Bjork album, but where does it come up in lyrics? The root of this word relates to the evening and its tolling bell, but also bats, Venus, a cocktail, and in slang – a kind, smart, cool girl

Word of the Week: It’s a slim, fast dog, the name of a car, a ship, a tank and a light aircraft, and also slang for recreational use of nitrous oxide from small metal containers, but where does it appear in song?

Word of the week: It’s an idealised location of magnificence and beauty with Chinese origins described in Coleridge’s poem, and a 1980 film starring Olivia Newton-John and song performed with ELO, but where else does it appear in lyrics?

Word of the week: Following on from zephyr last week, we work backwards to a colour term that can pertain to cheap books, a fish, a mussel, insect, a certificate for gold, and in urban slang, council workers wearing hi-vis jackets

Word of the week: Launching a new Song Bar series highlighting words or phrases used in lyrics for the oddness or musicality, let’s start with a z-word, and several examples including Madonna, Bill Callaghan, Frank Sinatra and Ian Dury

Song of the Day: Continuing a week of WW1 anniversary songs, in an unusually tender song from the heavy rock band, it’s a tragic first-person narration of the Battle of the Somme where 19,000 British soldiers were killed before noon

Song of the Day: Next in a week of songs dedicated to the First World War Armistice centenary, a deeply sad and vivid song by Ray Davies about the fleeting life of a young soldier killed in 1916 from the 1969 album, Arthur

Song of the Day: Continuing on the First World War Armistice Day centenary, a trio of some of the finest songs about war from the British singer and composer from her acclaimed 2011 album Let England Shake

Song of the Day: Today’s date, 7 November, is significant in all sorts of ways - elections, revolutions, births, deaths, but it’s the day in 1908 when two of America’s most famous outlaws were reportedly killed on the run in Bolivia

Song of the Day: In the wake of the most vital mid-term US elections in a generation, the 1972 rock song that is often wheeled out on these occasions, but less known is that it is a reworking of an earlier song, Reflected